Dy, short for Dynan, was standing outside; eyes closed, and face to the clouds as they poured their tears down upon his skin. With only a pair of white swim trunks, he stood out under the rain and enjoyed the moistness of the afternoon. “Hey!” he finally heard a voice yell from somewhere in front of him. He looked around and saw someone covered in a rain parka, holding an umbrella, walking up to him.
“Hey,” Dy replied as the other person got closer, confused. As a water dragon, it was normal for him to just enjoy wet weather. His fins were showing, and he knew it made him look a bit dangerous, despite that it was only because of the rain.
“You know you’ll catch cold standing in the rain like that,” the other figure said, making Dy laugh.
The other person sounded feminine and masculine at the same time, making gender impossible to discern, and whoever this person was didn’t know anything about dragons in general. All dragons are immune to minor diseases, such as colds or flu bugs, and in the case of water dragons, standing in the rain is actually healthy. Dy told his visitor exactly that, offering him a warm place out of the rain for a few minutes. “Thank you,” the stranger said, bowing forward slightly. “I hate the rain.”
Mory was always afraid of getting sick, because when he got sick, he could be in the hospital for months on medications before his immune system took effect. As a result of this defect, he never knew about a dragon’s natural immunities or the need for rain that some of them had. Both of those facts were very intriguing. “Hey,” the large, muscular dragon said, standing in the kitchen of his house. “You want anything? Coffee? Hot coco? I could make some sandwiches.”
“Coco’s fine,” the shy mouse said as he took off his rain parka. “Do you have blueberries by any chance?”
There was a minute of shuffling around, a microwave starting up, and finally, “No, sorry,” the dragon said. “Not a carnivore I take it.”
“No.”
After the microwave beeped, signaling the coco was done. Mory took the glass of hot coco that was offered and blew on it. “So, a mouse. That explains a few things, but how could you not know about a water dragon’s need for rain? I mean, that’s basic elementary school.”
“I… I never went to school,” Mory said quietly. “I get sick too easily. I don’t know why I stopped to talk to you. I should be home, not out where I might get sick.”
“Hey being sick isn’t the worst thing in the world, is it?” Dy said mildly.
“It is for me,” Mory said, taking a sip of his coco and starting to explain why. “And that’s why I can’t stay too long. I should be leaving when I’m done with my coco.”
“Well hey,” Dy said, holding out a hand. “Don’t be a stranger. My name’s Dynan.”
“Mory,” the mouse replied, shaking hands with a massive creature he sat beside in the living room of a strange house. “By the way, who is that next to you in that photo?”
Dy had to laugh at the mouse’s inquiry of the picture on his fireplace mantel. It was an old childhood friend. “Her name is Nira, and we used to date. I’ve known her since she was just a young fox kit. Ah, but dragons encounter a few problems when they date outside their own species. I may look about twenty, but I’ve lived almost two centuries already. She’s hit her midlife crisis at forty, but still acts like she did back in the day, calling me up for wild parties. We usually end up back to back in a massive fight at least once before the night is over.” A loud thunder crack interrupted Dy’s daydreaming. Taken back to reality he said morosely, “She’s been married three times, this is her third. No kids and she just found out two days ago that she’ll never have any. It was never even an option.”
There was a quiet longing in his voice. He wished he could help. When he looked over at the mouse, whose ears were flat to his head, he heard, “You still love her…”
There was a long awkward silence as the thought sank in. “I suppose I do,” Dy said faintly. “I feel sorry for her, at any rate. She deserves the best, and got some of the worst.”
Mory finished his coco and sighed. “I should be going,” he said, pulling his parka back over himself. “It was nice talking with you.”
“It was nice talking to you, too,” Dy admitted, distracted by his thoughts. “You helped me realize something. I have something to do tomorrow, so I should probably get going to bed.”
The next morning, Dy found himself looking at that old picture of him and Nira, her draped over his shoulders while he sat on the tide wall and watched the ocean. He was holding her arm, and she was smiling. “Has it really been almost thirty years since then?” he asked himself as he picked up the phone.
As he dialed her number, he let the memory flow through his head. He had been watching the surf and an old badger had taken a picture of them as a spur of the moment thing, handing them the picture. It was a sunny day, clouds spread thin in light waves across the azure sky. Kids were playing in the water, women were sun bathing, and there had been a volleyball match going on not that far away. Nira wrapped her arms around his neck and moaned by the left side of his head. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” she had asked.
“Yeah,” Dy had replied. “No matter which way I look.”
“Kiss up,” Nira scoffed, but Dy could feel her smiling.
As the phone rang, Dy was taken back. Nira picked up the phone, “Hm, yes?” she asked on the other end.
“Hey, Nira,” Dy said, excited to hear her voice.
“Dynan!” she yelled ecstatically. “Oh my god, I haven’t heard from you in months! How’s it going!?”
“You know me,” Dy replied with a shrug. “I’m still young. What about you? I heard about… you know.”
The silence that followed was almost too much. “I’m… I’m okay,” the vixen replied. “The way I see it, I can’t miss what I never had. Don’t tell me that that’s the only reason you called.”
“No, actually,” Dy sighed finally giving in. “It’s been way too long since I took the lead. I was wondering if you wanted to come to the beach.”
Nira was taken aback. She pulled out her copy of that old picture and smiled at it. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that, right about now.”
“Alright,” Dynan said on the other end of the line. “See you soon.”
“Yeah. See ya.”
“Who was that?” Mich, her lupine husband called from the living room.
“Just an old friend,” she yelled back. “He wanted to go to the beach, and called to see if I wanted to come with. You’d like him, actually.”
She heard her husband get up and saw him walk through the bedroom door. “I might know him already. What’s his name?”
“Dynan Wavecrest.”
The wolf thought for a long moment. “I can’t say I recognized the name. Maybe I should come with and meet him.”
“Mich, dump some instincts,” Nira sighed, agitated. “He and I did date, a long time ago, but dragons have too many problems dating other species, and if you start a fight with him, you’ll lose.”
“You dated a dragon?!” Mich yipped. “You never told me that!”
Nira just held out the old photo, which Mich walked over to take a look at. As he held it, the vixen was smiling at the memory. “He and I still raise a little Hell from time to time, but it isn’t like the good old days. I get a little slower each time, while he just gets better and better.”
Dy was sitting on the seawall again, just like he did back then. The scene before him was almost identical to the time all those years ago. The only difference now was that all the children were grown up, watching their own kids, now. When a pair of arms wrapped around his neck with a tired, sort of worn out moan beside his ear, Dy smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” the older voice asked.
“Yeah,” Dy replied, happy and sad at the same time. “No matter where I look.”
Nira giggled behind him as she let go and stood up. “You remember. I thought that was what this was about.”
Nira sat down beside her old friend and waited patiently. The dragon took a deep breath of the ocean air. “Where did it all go wrong?” he asked with more than a hint of depression in his voice. “Where did we lose it, and why can’t I stop thinking about it? Twenty seven years is more than enough to get a thought to finish, but with you, it’s like a broken record, or a good book I didn’t get to finish.”
She leaned over and took his hand. “It was never a question, Dy,” she told him. “It was always an answer. You stood at my back no matter what happened. There’s no one I trust, or love, more than you, but one simple truth stood in our way. You’ll out live me by two thousand years.”
“I know,” Dy replied with a sad nod. “And there isn’t really anything I can do about it either.”
Nira stood up, her knees hurting from the early arthritis setting in. “How about a long swim, straight into sunset, just like that day,” she suggested with a smile. She knew what he needed. “We might not have much time left together, but we can still spend it having fun.”
Dy took her hand and after he stood up and they ran to the water, splashing and playing like they had when she was still in her youth. After sunset, they both stopped at Dy’s house. “Just how I remember it,” she said with a tired smile. “Seriously, you never change anything.”
That was when she saw the picture of them on the seawall by his phone. She turned around and saw him looking away after the door closed. “The memories never fade,” he told her, shame written on his face. “They never fade, but they get easier to handle. I tried to forget. Almost drank myself into oblivion to do it, but nothing worked. After a while, I just stopped trying to forget and looked through our old photo album for kicks, and I… I don’t want to forget anymore. I hope you don’t hate me for that.”
That was a crushing confession but not one Nira hadn’t been prepared for. What she was unprepared for was the sudden kiss she got from the dragon. Not on the lips, but on her forehead before he held her close. “I missed this when we were dating,” she admitted warmly. “You were always more like a big brother to me.”
“I know,” Dy replied, squeezing just a little tighter.
“I’d like to help you make dinner, just to show off what I’ve learned recently,” she said with a quick push away from the dragon. “See if you can keep up.”
And so it went, that Dy made up for lost time with Nira, finding his place after a day without distractions with his best friend. Another twenty years went by with many happy memories being made. The doctors were wrong and Nira did have one child. She named him after Dy’s father, Sigunder. The little wolf cub grew up around Dynan, calling him “big bro”. After twenty years, though, Nira’s heart finally gave out, at the age of sixty-four.
Dy, being her oldest friend, spoke the longest at her funeral, recounting many of their adventures, even some no one else knew. When they buried her, no one cried longer or louder than Dy. He was so loud that a dozen other water dragons showed up, roaring their lament for the loss of family none of them knew. And as the dirt was poured onto her grave, the sky poured down, in honor of the vixen who lived like dragon.
We all have a friend who will live in our hearts forever. I didn’t write this to honor anyone in particular. I just wrote it to honor the fact that we all love, live, and die, with someone in our hearts. Never forget that person who lives with you, until death, and beyond.
